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Day 10 – The Miniclick Photobook Advent Calendar, 2014

Today on the Grand Miniclick Photobook Advent Calendar (the original photobook themed, internet based, advent calendar), Jim takes us through a book we saw in dummy form sometime ago and have been excited about ever since. It’s Alexandra Lethbridge’s ‘The Meteorite Hunter’…

A lot of photo projects attempt to look for something different in the everyday, it seems like a common theme, but not many explore it in such a fascinating and well executed manner as Ally Lethbridge’s ‘The Meteorite Hunter’, an archive of a search for meteorites and the places they come from, based on the impulse to search for the ‘other’ within the everyday.

The extensive body of work combines photos taken of collected objects (books, pamphlets and postcards), photos of geological specimens collected from museum gift shops and eBay, images from archives (from NASA and others), images taken from books and adapted images. I only know this, because in a design masterstroke, a catalogue of the sources of the the images contained in the book is hidden within the pages (some might have found it straight away, I have to admit, it took me a while and took me by surprise).

All this is combined in the pages to great effect, using images printed on trace, overlaid onto images printed on paper, to make us look at the photos in different ways and to explore the work further. The results is that the reader is left with the impression that this particular body of work is at it’s very best when in book form. Japanese stab binding holds it altogether (a practical decision, rather than purely aesthetic) and the design and production (which owes some to the superb Format Editions) is that of a book that has been meticulously researched and executed.

It’s available from Ally’s website here. The standard edition comes in at £55, and there’s a range of special editions if you’ve a bit more cash to splash.